March 20, 2010

LinkedIn Direct Ads .. A Threat to Google?

Earlier this week upon logging in to my LinkedIn account, I noticed their Direct Ads. While I normally don't get excited about advertising, for some reason, I was curious. I decided to explore the service and ended up creating a short tutorial. The logical question is ... Why am I so intrigued with LinkedIn's direct advertisement service?

Consider, what if you had the ability to dramatically focus your ad campaigns by key demographics, and only pay for actual "click throughs"? In addition, using the power of social networking your target populations could learn about you, the advertiser, as a person. That message is powerful, and new. Google Adword campaigns can not deliver this kind of interaction. Thus, could a strong LinkedIn be dangerous for Google's primary revenue base? Take a few minutes and watch my latest Northstar Nerd Tutorial, and you be the judge. I've included one screenshot below from my tutorial: